Silent Killer
by Kytheres
Summary: There's a killer out there who is having a world of problems. A ghost or a demon has caught hold of his heart and isn't letting go until he kills. One tiny little detail? He's a member of the police force that Ronan O'Connor used to work for, and after his brother-in-law's little stint with whatever that was, he's beginning to think he's dead meat. Length not yet known.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter One—New Guy on the Block

It was like any other day before _it_ happened. He was going to a drug bust on Cedar Street. These people sure were idiots thinking that they could get things whole thing going and not have the police notice. They were _right_ behind the station for crying out loud.

He'd gone in, with backup, everything was going fine. It was late at night, sure, and all the neighbors looked confused. It was a drugs bust. What did they want, an encore?

Yeah, he'd given 'em an encore, but not right now. He was too tired. He'd stayed up too late. It was a good thing he didn't have a girlfriend (he didn't have any private and/or social life at all, it seemed, and he was gonna die alone), otherwise she'd be pissed. He had a cat, but Tape was bad enough as it was. Yes, he has a cat named Tape.

He sneezed, some of the powder scratching at his nose.

"Maybe you should go, Sparks," his supervisor, Rick Wilder, told him. "You don't look so hot."

Jason scratched his head. "Yeah, that might be a good idea, sir. I spent all 'a last night digging up information about what ingredients went into meth and heroin, and what people had enough dough in this neighborhood to get some. It took a while."

"Oh?" Wilder frowned. "What's in meth?"

"That's easy," Sparks answered. "Pseudoephedrine."

"What about heroin?"

"Morphine and Acetic Anhydride," he answered without thinking. His supervisor smiled.

"All right. I guess you do know what you're talking about." He clapped the man on the back. "Now get some rest."

As soon as Wilder passed by him, Sparks felt something enter into him, making him shake like he was getting electrocuted, but not very much. The feeling didn't last very long. The night suddenly felt chillier than it had earlier, and he shivered.

_What was that all about?_

He shook his head, shaking off the feeling. _It was just the wind_, he told himself. _Get a hold of yourself, Sparky._

There was a crowd gathering at the edge of the police tape, and a voice called up to him. "Jason! Jason!"

It was a woman, a girl with dark hair, like his own. Was it who he thought it was?

When he got down there, she was jumping up and down, trying to get his attention.

"What?" he asked, suddenly a little onry.

She raised her hands. "Whoa, there, cowboy. Didn't want ya snapping at me. Sorry for the maintenance call..."

He shook his head. "Sorry about snapping at you. What did you want?"

She looked around nervously. "Um..."

"What? Do you want to talk somewhere else about it?"

She shook her head yes.

He sighed. "All right. Where?"

"Parking lot?"

He rolled his eyes. "All right. I gotta put my stuff away, and cart the monsters back to the station. Meet you there?"

She nodded again.

"'Kay. See you in a few."

"'Kay."

He pulled back to the police car where the pots' were chained up—there were only three, but they had to be carted separately, and he was talking a teenager—a nineteen-year-old kid, almost an adult, blah, blah, who cares? He has two more years. He can wait to do drugs and drink and do pot in prison. Possession of stolen property, grand theft, plus a bunch of minor B-'n-Es? Minor because he had been drunk and disorderly (from running away from the cops) and had gotten the idea after entering the victim's house. The victim now being the deceased, whom the oldest guy had killed. Bludgeoned to death.

_The things people do for pleasure,_ he spat in his head.

The kid in the back seat was asleep and drooling. Great, kid. That seat was expensive to fix, the last time someone had killed it. They'd had a seizure and then thrown up and pissed all over, no control over their bladder.

_I'm the luckiest guy in the world, aren't I?_ He muttered internally.

Something in his chest felt unexpectedly cold, and he gasped. He tightened his grip on the steering wheel, and something in his head demanded that he turn directly into traffic.

_No,_ he said, demanding the chill on his heart to go away. Something in his stomach turned, and goose bumps swept up his arms.

_Do it _now, someone in his head commanded.

Sparks jerked the wheel away from oncoming traffic and slammed into a tree, awakening the drowsy boy. "Drowsy driving, eh, Professor?"

_Professor? Where was this kid, college? _Head hurting like what he thought hell would, he got out of the car, limping a little, walked back in, and radioed for help.

He sat back in the seat, moaning. "No, kid. School got out a while ago."

The kid smiled, one that looked both genuine and unaware of its surroundings. "Prof, you're a cool guy."

Sparks moaned. "The name is Sparks, not 'Prof,' now cool it with the drunken...ness..."

The kid smiled. "Can't think either, eh, boss?"

Jason frowned. "Kid, I am neither your boss, nor your professor, I am a detective charged with getting you back to the precinct."

"Sure, Prof. You gotta a wife?"

"Kid!" he yelped, hitting himself on the roof. What made him do that?

"What?" he laughed, giving that stupid "happy-drunk" smile. "'She a looker or what?"

"Kid, I don't have a wife." _Just shut him up already. _You shut up, whoever you are.

He looked confused when Sparks looked at him in the rear-view mirror. "What do you mean you don't have a wife? Why did you freak out at me?"

"I don't know, kid, the shock?"

He frowned. "All right, I can understand that. But you don't have a wife? How old are you? Early twenties?"

"Late twenties."

The boy made a little "o" with his mouth. "Twenty-eight?" He laughed. "You're twenty-freaking-eight, and you don't have a wife?" He laughed again, the information somehow entertaining. "You are a sucker for the ladies..." he whispered softly.

Sparks glared at the kid. "What are you talking about? Is this post-drug psychobabble or something?"

The kid smiled that weird drunken smile again. "You could call it that, I guess..."

Sparks rolled his eyes and waited for the police to come get him. He wasn't getting anywhere in this car. Wilder was gonna kill him.

_What made you go off and crash into a tree like that, Sparks? You've never acted like this before, what's wrong? Not enough sleep? We shouldn't have put you on this case. You always get too into it and something bad always happens._

Maybe not always, but usually. Usually because of him.

When the flashing lights got there, the kid was smiling and spitting out blood-he had smacked his mouth on the driver's seat in front of him-, looking like some creepy vampire, and Jason Sparks was half conscious.

_Tomorrow, I'm gonna feel like a brick that hit the pavement five stories up._

One question lingered in his mind.

_Who had I been talking to?_


	2. Chapter 2--Lady in Red

(Tell me what you think)

Chapter Two—Lady in Red

If dreams could be considered the same thing as nightmares, everything last night was. The monster looking down at him, its snout pushed up in his face, the glowing red eyes glaring at him. Scene change, and there was a silhouette of Mandy Coolidge, her hat almost flying off her head but caught by her left hand, her dress blown up by the wind, her curly hair flying all over. And then the spotlight burst on, and her blood-drenched body hanging from the wire, convulsing from the telephone wire, the rope with the metal wire stuck into it digging into her pretty little neck.

It was as if he was the killer, looking at his work, like an artist staring at the most beautiful painting they'd ever done, the feeling of accomplishment and wonder. He saw his hands brushing away her gingerbread hair, her opal eyes looking dazzling in the now morning sunlight. The open lot with houses off in the distance, about a fourth of a mile away, to the east, a church to the south, and the girl's little yellow house off to north where her mother and father were screaming their eyes out, the eyes pulling themselves out of the sockets, rivers of crimson blood spilling out. The mother's golden hair shriveled as her body decayed, the skin disappearing, being replaced with brown bones, as if they had already been placed in the ground, the father's green eyes and short gingerbread hair with the bangs in the front sticking straight up, his pale yellow sleeveless vest with the dark brown jagged stripes in the middle, his mouth never moving as he, too, became mummified.

The angle turned back to him, his dark suit-jacket waving in the wind, his black tie licking his face. His hair was a little longer, still thick and black, but longer, reaching his face. His eyes, not the normal green they usually displayed, were a sickening red color, like organs being outside of the body for too long, the intestine turning that sick shade as if it were molding.

Organs couldn't mold. Could they?

Mummy wrappings appeared out of nowhere, ripping him out of his body, the creature with the bloody, red eyes gripping his face and smiling. They wrapped the ghost of him, holding him suspended in the air while the demon in his body just sat and watched, savoring every moment of fear he exhibited. The wrappings slithered up his body, moving like a snake, and he could feel the pressure they exerted, pressing him in on himself, breaking him and packaging him until he was so small no one would ever see him again. He tried screaming, tried moving, but the mummy wrappings were doing their job on him. Suppressing his shouts for help, restricting his movement. The demon smiled, tossed his hair with his hand, smoothing back his bangs with a hand, even laughing, as if it was a normal day and he wasn't destroying the original inhabitant of the body he was operating. The last thing he saw before the bindings snapped shut was the back of his body, the black suit walking leisurely down the street.

Before his dream ended, the demon opened the wrappings, whispered something inaudible, smiled at the man's confusion, and then tucked the wrappings back so he could see everything that happened. The thing that got him the most? The demon's eyes had reverted back to his green eyes.

The demon clenched his fist, and his body jolted, his bindings squeezing the life out of him.

He woke up screaming and gasping for his life.

"Oh, hey, old man!"

Gripping his head in a splitting headache, Sparks looked up at his companion. "What?" he had to squint to see who was speaking to him. His head hurt. Maybe the accident had done something to his eyes. Or his occipital lobe. That would cause some eyesight damage. Sparks leaned back on his bead, still holding his head with his left hand. The kid was one his left, but the sun was bright and the blinds were open. It didn't feel good. Bright lights always made his head hurt.

"What do you want, kid?"

The boy smiled, now much more aware of where he was. "Oh, come on, pops! You can't forget last night! You were mumbling some mumbo-jumbo about monsters and creepy old men with gingerbread." He looked uncertain. "Or maybe it was gumdrops." He threw his hands up. "I don't know. I was kinda zonked out, too." He gave a sheepish smile.

Sparks frowned and turned away from him.

The kid's shoulders drooped. "Oh, so now you aren't gonna talk to me?"

"Kid," Sparks replied, "my head is splitting, and I don't feel like talking to anyone."

The room's door opened, and Wilder stepped through looking flustered. "Sparks, what happened?" he stopped and looked at the kid in the bed next to him. "And why do they have him in the bed next to you? Why is he even here? The nurse told Detective Miles that he could escort him back to the station."

The kid smiled. "Yeah, but then I threw up from all the partying last night. It was an awful experience. The nurse nearly fainted when she saw me puke up my own blood."

_Dry-heaving?_ Sparks thought. _Gross._ "Why would she faint? She's a nurse…"

He shrugged. "She's not in the operating room for a reason, I suppose."

Wilder frowned. "We never got your name, son."

It was the kid's turn to frown. "'Kid' and 'son,' huh? You guys are just downright creative." He let go of a long breath and breathed back in again. "Daniel Fischer. Nineteen. Plus I have previous misdemeanors. Disturbing the peace and all that." He scratched an itch on his head. "How does bail work?" He started biting his thumb-nail while he listened to Wilder explain.

Sparks put his hands behind his head and leaned back on them, thinking about the voice. Where had it come from? Had it "entered" him when he felt that electrifying chill? What was it? Was it just his mind playing tricks on him? He had heard from retired policemen that sometimes the criminals got "into their head" and they started acting like crazy people. Or the job just got to them and they started thinking suicidal thoughts. That was scary. He didn't want to commit suicide just because some voice that didn't have a body behind it was telling him to do so. Heck, even if there _was_ a body behind it, he wouldn't do it. He would never dream of taking his own life.

Without meaning to, he fell back asleep.

Fortunately, there weren't any soul-wrenching nightmares to think about. Just those random every-day dreams where nothing of any relevant importance happen until some bum tries to decipher what in heck they could possibly mean.

There was a man sitting on an operating table, a tree growing out of his chest from the ground underneath him. The tree was brown, looking healthy and normal, and the man didn't look at all alarmed that he had a tree growing out of his chest. No complaints of weird feelings. The doctors and nurses were perplexed that something like this would happen. But soon they had to move the man to a different area because the building had to be destroyed. The infectious disease ward had become quarantined (weren't they always quarantined?), and they needed to destroy the hospital. The man wanted to stay there and live out his days with the tree—he said that no human disease would harm him, but the doctors and nurses were adamant that he needed to leave, and so they chopped the tree down. The man screamed and screamed, telling them to stop, exclaiming how much it hurt, but they wouldn't listen.

They just chopped it down, and the man on the operating table died, blood running from the bark like flood-gates bursting apart. It drenched the room in blood, and the doctors and nurses immediately deflated, their bodies slowly releasing something, like air from a balloon. All the solid parts were still there—the skeleton—but everything else made it look like a bag of bones with no definition to it. No muscle, no fat, no internal organs. All of it was gone.

He moaned in his sleep, concerned.

_You have weird dreams, boy_.

The voice…? Again?

It was morning and the sun was flooding the room. Was it the second day he had been in here? Car accident victims didn't stay in the hospital for very long, did they? _'__Guess it deals with how bad the situation is,_ he told himself. But the voice was back?

_'__The voice,' 'car accident,' 'homicide'…Words are just words, nothing more._

"How… How am I a 'boy'?" he asked the voice in his head.

_Really? You don't… I'm older than you._

"How?"

_How? I'm a freaking _ghost,_genius. Figure it out. You're a detective, aren't you?_

"Well, yeah, but I'm a narc detective."

_You're a what?_

"A narcotics detective. Drug busts and stuff like that."

_Drug busts?! That's not going to help me at all. I need to get out of here._ The voice paused. _Wait. Even if you _were_a 'narc' detective, you have to use logical reasoning and all that, right?_

"Um… Obviously."

_Are there not as many homicide detectives or something?_

"What? No. It's just that murder doesn't happen all _that_ often."

_You'd be surprised, kid. You'd be surprised._

"If any type of crime is going to happen, it's mostly going to be fraud, domestic violence, or some type of drug-related crime. Homicide isn't all that common. Well, that's not true. It's common, but it doesn't happen every day… It's not typical."

_So being a homicide detective… is boring?_

"What? No, it's… I wouldn't know, I'm not one… But being a detective isn't about the adventures, like what P.I. work is. All though I'm sure P.I.s have their fair share of paperwork—which is mostly what detectives do all day. Paperwork. Desk work. Adventuring isn't all that—"

_Yeah, yeah, I got it the first five times you said that._


End file.
